Sunday, 2 August 2015

Night Sky: Firewatching.............................................to BlanquiThe universe as the site of lingering cosmiccatastrophes -– points of conflict in the text,................................Nablus, Jenin,.......................................through which it’s impossible to see the stars.

Dark spots that shade the eyes. “This eternityof the human being among the stars is a melancholything… There exists a world where a man follows aroad that, in the other world, his double did not take.”

The routinization of the suffering that comes with having a soul. The martyr’s pain is repeated inthe same moment over and over again at infinite sitesscattered through the universe, pockets of darkness between stars.

Life as the monotonous flow of an hourglass that eternally empties and turns itself over, teachingyes, but always the same lesson, the new sand isalways old the old sand always new.

Tonight's view of #rockyfire with the nearly full moon: image viaNiniane @NinianeK, 30 July 2015

Parting shot from the #RockyFire. Headed back to SJSU.: image via SJSU FireWeatherLab@FireWeatherLab, 30 July 2015

Incendiary Writing on the Wall: The 'Price Tag'

Palestinians in the West Bank village of Duma watched and attended
the funeral of Ali Saad Dawabsha, the 18-month-old child killed in an
arson attack in Nablus about 30 miles north of Jerusalem: photo by Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse 31 July 2015

Israel’s hawks can't dodge blame for this day of violence: Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 31 July 2015 (Last modified Saturday 1 August 2015)

The
condemnations are striking but still they ring hollow. Binyamin
Netanyahu denounced the arson attack by Jewish settlers on the West Bank
home of the Dawabsha family, in which Ali Saad, a baby just 18 months
old, was burned to death, as an “act of terrorism in every respect”.
Netanyahu was joined by Naftali Bennett, the leader of the
ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party,
which is close to being the political wing of the settlers’ movement.
Bennett described the murder as a “horrendous act of terror”. The
defence minister, the army, they all condemned this heinous crime.

Condemnations from across political spectrum after Palestinian baby
burnt in #WestBank arson: image via Haaretz,com@haaretzcom, 31 July 2015

Which is welcome, of course. It’s good that there were no ifs or
buts, no attempts to excuse the inexcusable. But still it rings hollow.

The words sound empty partly because, while this act is extreme in
its cruelty, it is not a freak event. Talk to the Israeli human rights
groups that monitor their country’s 48-year occupation of the West Bank
and they are clear that the masked men who broke into the Dawabsha
family home in the early hours and set it alight committed a crime
exceptional only in its consequences. “Violence by settlers against
Palestinians is part of the daily routine of the occupation,” Hagai
El-Ad, director of the B'tselem organisation, told me.

Indeed, El-Ad says this attack was the eighth time since 2012 that
settlers have torched inhabited buildings. There have been dozens of
assaults on property, too: mosques, agricultural land, businesses. “In
most of these cases, they didn’t find the perpetrators, despite having
the best intelligence agencies on the planet.” He is referring to the
culture of impunity that has always protected the settlers.

That charge can be directed at past Israeli governments of the
centre-left as well as the hawkish right: while the latter actively
sponsored the settlement that followed the 1967 war, the former indulged
it. But the right’s guilt runs deeper, which is why its tearful words
of regret now sound so false.

Grandfather standing in the second house burnt by settlers in.#duma. Only by chance no one slept there that night.: image via Combatants for Peace @cfpeace, 1 August 2015

Take
Bennett. Put aside his repeated insistence that there will never
be a Palestinian state, thereby crushing the dreams of an independent
life for all those living under Israeli rule. Focus only on his conduct
this week. Today’s murderous arson attack is assumed to be an act of
revenge for the court-ordered
dismantling on Wednesday of two buildings in the West Bank settlement
of Bet El. The buildings were unfinished and empty. Israel’s supreme
court ruled them illegal and ordered the army to demolish them. The
settlers raged at the decision, demonstrating violently against the
soldiers and police who were there to enforce it. And guess who stood on
a roof at Bet El, egging the protesters on, stirring them to ever
greater heights of fury? Why, it was Naftali Bennett.

Israeli hawks pump ever more air into the ultra-nationalist balloon –- only to feign shock when it explodes

Netanyahu himself is not much better. You don’t have to recall his own disavowal of Palestinian statehood
and a two-state solution on the eve of March’s election, or his racist
warning that Arab citizens of Israel were heading to the polls “in
droves”. Look only at his actions in recent days. Stung by the protests
at Bet El, he announced construction of another 300 units in Bet El and
504 in East Jerusalem. In other words, he did not punish the settlers
for their lawless behaviour: he rewarded it.

@LTCPeterLerner We who've been on the ground know that when settlers attack, the Israeli army backs them up. #Duma: image via Max Blumenthal @ Max Blumenthal, 31 July 2015

There is a pattern here. The hawks of the Israeli right pump ever
more air into the ultra-nationalist balloon -– only to feign shock when
it explodes. A small, but telling example: yesterday an ultra-orthodox
Jewish fanatic went on the rampage at the Jerusalem Pride march,
stabbing wildly at anyone his knife could reach. He injured six, one
critically. Among those who condemned his actions was Jewish Home
Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich. Yet Smotrich calls himself a "proud homophobe":
in 2006 he helped organise “the beast parade” which saw demonstrators
mock Pride by walking through Jerusalem with donkeys and goats, as if to
equate homosexuality with bestiality.

An Israeli woman received medical care after she and five others were
stabbed during a gay rights parade in Jerusalem. The assailant, who was arrested, was identified as an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who had
recently been released from jail after serving time for a similar
attack: photo by Atef Safadi/European Pressphoto Agency, 30 July 2015

The prime example of turning on the tap –- only to be appalled by the
flood -– is Netanyahu himself. Twenty years ago he stirred up crowds
livid at then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s apparent concessions to the
Palestinians. They waved placards depicting Rabin as a Palestinian
terrorist, even as an SS officer –- but Netanyahu said nothing. They
carried a mocked-up coffin of Rabin and still Netanyahu said nothing.
But when a far rightist assassinated Rabin, Netanyahu was of course
among the first to be shocked, shocked, by such wickedness.

Next to Ali's crib, his baby bottle; milk still in it. #Duma: image via Molly Hunter @mollymhunter, 31 July 2015

It’s true too that each “price tag” attack like yesterday’s
–-
designed to show that even the slightest brake on the settlement
venture will come at a price –- helps entrench the position that
territorial compromise is impossible, that the evacuation of settlements
will trigger civil war. That is a conclusion that can only boost
support for the Bibi-Bennett hostility to a two-state accord with the
Palestinians. And yet, for all that, it would be wrong to see the
Israeli right as a monolith -– and even more wrong to see Israel itself
that way. There are distinctions and they matter. This week’s men of
violence illustrate them.

The graffiti left by the murderers of baby Ali Saad offered a clue.
“Long live the messiah,” said one. I’ve seen slogans like that before,
in the radical settler enclave
of Hebron: they point to a strand of settler extremism that denounces
the actual state of Israel, and especially its army, as godless
institutions of secular democracy, demanding in their place the creation
of a “Judean kingdom”. To them, Netanyahu is a traitor and apostate.

Similarly,
the would-be assassin of the Pride rally, Yishai
Schlissel, told the Jerusalem court where he appeared today that he did
not recognise its authority because it "does not follow the rules of the
holy Torah" (as if he does). That suggests he belongs to the strand of
anti-Zionist
ultra-orthodoxy that regards the modern, secular state of Israel as a
blasphemous pre-empting of the divine plan for the Jews.

It
can be baffling, but such are the deep divisions within Israeli
society, often missed by those looking on from afar. Israel's president,
Reuven Rivlin -– who, though a hawk on territorial issues, has emerged
as the country’s most urgent voice against bigotry and intolerance -–
spoke in June of Israel’s four tribes: the strictly orthodox, the
secular, the national-religious and the Arab minority.

MAP are in touch with Dr. Anas, from Nablus burns unit we support, he's spent all night treating children from #Duma: image via MedicAidPalestiniansl @ MedicAidPal, 31 July 2015

Back when we used to speak of the “Middle East peace process” there
was an assumption, contained in that very phrase, that if only
Palestinians and Israelis could reach an accord, peace would come to the
entire region. Now we surely know that even if there were such a pact,
it would not end the killing in Yemen, the slaughter in Syria or the
carnage in Iraq. Even if Palestinians and Israelis embraced, Isis would
keep on beheading those it deems the wrong kind of Muslim.

Muslim worshipers, guarded by Israeli police, pray on the streets of
the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood in east Jerusalem, following restrictions
by Israeli police to only allow men above 50-year-old to access the
Al-Aqsa Mosque compound: photo by Jack Guez/AFP, 31 July 2015

But something else is true too. If the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
were solved tomorrow, there are no guarantees it would bring
tranquillity to Israel or indeed to the divided Palestinians. It might
simply unleash the internal conflicts that the external clash has
bottled up and contained for so long.

As the Dawabsha family mourns, and as Israelis and Palestinians hold
their breath, trembling at the prospect of yet another dread cycle of
retaliation and escalation, it is worth remembering that this conflict
involves enmity piled upon enmity, hatred upon hatred, within and
without –- making it harder to solve with each passing day.

A Palestinian protester uses a slingshot during clashes with Israeli security forces near Ramallah on Friday: photo by APA Images/REX Shutterstock via The Guardian, 1 August 2015

Palestinian youth killed by troops after arson attack sparks West Bank violence:The 17-year-old was shot by Israeli troops at Atara checkpoint near
Ramallah, Palestinian officials said, amid unrest over death of 18-month
old boy: Kate Shuttleworth in Jerusalem for The Guardian, 1 August 2015

A Palestinian youth has been killed by Israeli forces in Ramallah in
the wake of violent West Bank clashes that erupted after an 18-month-old
toddler was killed in an arson attack in Duma yesterday morning.According to Palestinian medical officials Laith Fadel al-Khaladi,
17, from Jifna, a village near Ramallah died early on Saturday after he
was shot by Israeli sniper fire during clashes at Atara checkpoint near
Bir Zeit.Two Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours after he fatal arson attack
that killed Palestinian infant Ali Dawabsheh that also left his parents
Reham and Saad with third degree burns over up to 90% of their bodies.
His four-year-old brother also has burns over 60% of his body. They are
all being treated in an Israeli military hospital near Tel Aviv.Earlier on Friday Mohammed al-Masri, also 17, from Gaza, was killed by Israeli army fire
as he reportedly approached the border fence during a youth protest
against the fatal arson attack that killed West Bank infant Ali
Dawabsheh.Dozens of other Palestinians were injured in clashes across the West
Bank yesterday.

Another Palestinian youth in Hebron was shot in the leg
during violent protests and another four were injured when the IDF fired
tear gas and rubber bullets at stone-throwers near Halhul in the West
Bank.Clashes broke out overnight in East Jerusalem. In Shuaafat refugee
camp another Palestinian was seriously injured with a rubber-coated
steel bullet allegedly fired at his head and another 11 were injured
during clashes.

A Palestinian protester threw a stone at Israeli soldiers in clashes
in Hebron, on the West Bank. The violence came after Jewish extremists
were suspected of setting fire to the home of a Palestinian family in
Nablus that left a child dead and others in the family injured: photo by Abed Al Haslhamoun/European Pressphoto Agency, 31 July 2015

#Israel army at scene of riots next to entrance of #Palestinian #Duma village, where a baby was murdered Friday.: image via Seth Frantzman @sfrantzman, 1 August 2015

Pictures of the ongoing clashes between youths and #IOF in #Duma village, south of #Nablus: image via PalestineSocialSeth Frantzman @PalestineSocial, 1 August 2015

Pictures of the ongoing clashes between youths and #IOF in #Duma village, south of #Nablus: image via PalestineSocial @PalestineSocial, 1 August 2015

Pictures of the ongoing clashes between youths and #IOF in #Duma village, south of #Nablus: image via PalestineSocial @PalestineSocial, 1 August 2015

Pictures of the ongoing clashes between youths and #IOF in #Duma village, south of #Nablus: image via PalestineSocial @PalestineSocial, 1 August 2015

consumed by flames

A wall of flames lurches over a ridge as a resident of Morgan Valley
Road near Lower Lake, California, prepares to evacuate because of the
3,000 acre Rocky Fire that has taken hold in Lake County: photo by Kent Porter/The Press Democrat via AP, 30 July 2015

Wow! Kent Porter once again showing the power of professional photojournalism. #RockyFire: image via Kevin McCallum @SRCityBeat, 30 July 2015

Updated photos from @kentphotos on the scene of the #RockyFire in #LakeCounty: image via The Press Democrat b@NorthBayNews, 29 July 2015

11 comments:

16-year-old girl stabbed at Jerusalem Pride parade has died in hospital after three day battle for her life. Shira Banki was tragically killed aged just 16.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/16yearold-girl-stabbed-at-jerusalem-pride-parade-has-died-in-hospital-after-three-day-battle-for-her-life-10433458.html

The post here includes a photo of the bloody legs of the very unfortunate and plainly innocent young woman attacked by the busy beanie nutter at the Pride Parade; she had been guilty so far as is known of nothing more than dwelling in a terrorist state, and was fatally stabbed in plain sight by the Ultra-Ultra Nutter, who'd executed this exact same deed before, had openly vowed his intent to do it again, yet had been allowed by the "authorities" (gestapocopz) to circulate freely in the crowd, with that mysterious black bag. (Just imagine a similarly equipped Palestinian operating with that sort of freedom, in that place.)

(I've cropped the photo here so that all that's seen of the victim are the bloodied lower extremities, bad enough and indeed had I known she would not survive, I'd not have posted even that shot.)

Meanwhile, in a piece I'd have posted here but for the limits of space and failing geriatric industry, Harriet Sherwood, the Guardian's Jerusalem correspondent, raised an interesting question re. the hypocrisy of Israeli public officials in responding to the arson attack:

Israeli government's talk is cheap on 'price tag' violence: If perpetrators of suspected arson attack are caught it will be instructive to compare their treatment with that of Palestinians accused of stone-throwing: Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian, 31 July 2015

The killing of a Palestinian infant in a suspected arson attack by extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank has been swiftly condemned as an act of terror by both Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

This horrific act is not an isolated event, but part of a widespread campaign by extremist settlers against Palestinians and their property, and it will be instructive to compare the treatment of the perpetrators -– if and when they are identified -– with Palestinian youths accused of stone-throwing.

Within hours of the attack, the Palestine Liberation Organisation released data showing a total of 369 attacks it says were committed by Israeli settlers from the beginning of 2015 up to July 27 – an average of more than 12 attacks each week. They include harassment and intimidation, the destruction and theft of olive trees, the poisoning of wells, stone-throwing, firing with live ammunition at people and property, assaults, verbal abuse, vandalism and the spraying of graffiti on property.

B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group which monitors settler activity, said that in the past three years, nine Palestinian homes in the West Bank had been set alight, and a Palestinian family had been severely burned when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Palestinian taxi. “In recent years, Israeli civilians set fire to dozens of Palestinian homes, mosques, businesses, agricultural land and vehicles in the West Bank. The vast majority of the these cases were never solved, and in many of them the Israeli police did not even bother to take elementary investigative actions,” B’Tselem said in a statement.

Most settler attacks are relatively small-scale, but together they present a picture of life for Palestinian villages in Area C, the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control and home to more than 200 settlements –- all of which are illegal under international law. Throw in restrictions on movement for Palestinians and the continual and invasive presence of the Israeli military –- and the grinding, oppressive reality of life under almost half a century of occupation becomes a little clearer.

Many of the attacks carried out by extremist settlers are under the “price tag” banner –- actions against Palestinians in response to moves by the Israeli authorities that are viewed by the perpetrators as hostile to settlers. Friday’s arson attack is thought to be an act of revenge for the Israeli security forces' demolition of two buildings in the settlement of Beit El earlier this week, which were deemed illegal by the Israeli supreme court. (The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, swiftly approved the construction of hundreds of new homes in Beit El and East Jerusalem following protests.)

Following Friday’s attack, Netanyahu said: 'The state of Israel takes a strong line against terrorism regardless of who the perpetrators are.' But, in general, the response of the Israeli authorities to the perpetrators of settler violence is rather different to the response to Palestinian attackers.

Palestinian acts of violence are routinely followed by military incursions into towns and villages, the detention and interrogation of boys and men, and often the demolition of the suspect’s home. The Israeli parliament recently passed a law, setting a maximum 20-year jail sentence for stone-throwing with intent to injure or harm.

Palestinian youths are often detained at night, sometimes interrogated without lawyers or family members present, subject to physical and verbal abuse, forced to sign 'confessions' written in Hebrew -– a language that few can read, shackled and handcuffed during court appearances, rarely given bail, and serve sentences in prisons far from home with relatives needing elusive permits for infrequent visits.

The perpetrators of settler violence are much less likely to be brought to justice. When youths are arrested and charged, they are dealt with under Israeli civilian law and courts, whereas Palestinian youths face military justice. Settler youths are rarely held in detention before trial and have access to superior legal representation.

Friday’s arson attack was met with condemnation by Israel, Palestine and the international community. But, as B’Tselem says, “official condemnations of this attack are empty rhetoric as long as politicians continue their policy of avoiding enforcement of the law on Israelis who harm Palestinians, and do not deal with the public climate and the incitement which serve as backdrop to these acts. In the light of this, the clock is ticking in the countdown to the next arson attack, and the one after.”

And finally, sigh...This latest round of baby-burning and gay-stabbing having created a slight public relations embarrassment for Israel, the subsequent and predictable knee-jerk hypocritical exculpatory gestures of the "heads" of "state" (Bibi mailing in the familiar all-purpose hollow-condolence tapes, suitable for any atrocity and intended strictly for foreign consumption, those dumb Americans will believe anything) are now being ground and groaned out, as anticipated, so that the falsifications will be thick upon the earth by morning, and Hillary, palms out, will be able to say, "See, our good friends in Israel are doing what's right".

"The Israeli defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, said on Sunday he had instructed the Shin Bet security service, police and military to apply 'administrative detention' on rightwing Jewish citizens suspected of involvement in terror attacks against Palestinians as a direct response to the firebombing in the West Bank village of Duma that left 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh dead and critically injured his brother and parents.

"Israel currently applies administrative detention solely to Palestinians and its extension to Israelis reflects the government’s frustration at the failure to track down the assailants. No suspects have been arrested in connection with Friday’s arson attack and no group has claimed responsibility.

"A senior security official told Israeli Radio on Sunday: 'There is no choice but to treat suspects of hate crimes against Palestinians the same way as Palestinian suspects of terror.'

"Administrative detention allows for arrests without charges and enables the incarceration of suspects for undefined periods of time without sufficient evidence to try them. It theoretically allows investigators to gather evidence while preventing further attacks, but Israel has been accused of abusing the procedure to keep militants behind bars without trial.

"According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, 5,442 Palestinians were in detention without trial as of June.

"If enforced, the move will give Israeli officials far more leeway to arrest Jewish citizens suspected of being involved in the attack in Duma and potentially other 'price tag' 'attacks – where graffiti is left at the site of the attack – and other hate crimes against Palestinians.

“'As always, each case of administrative detention will have to be approved by the courts, but by invoking this the minister is taking action consistent with his effort to exact the full measure of the law against these people,' a spokesman for Ya’alon told Reuters.

"The separate attacks have put a spotlight on Jewish extremists, while the firebombing further inflamed tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, with clashes breaking out in various cities.

"Netanyahu condemned both attacks and called the firebombing 'terrorism' – a word usually used by Israelis to refer to violence by Palestinians. On Sunday, he spoke of 'zero tolerance' for such acts. 'We are determined to vigorously fight manifestations of hate, fanaticism and terrorism from whatever side,' he said at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday morning.

"But many have accused his government of failing to address the problem of Jewish extremism and of going dangerously far in its support for rightwing settler groups.

"Ali’s uncle, Nasser Dawabsheh, called on the Israeli government to protect the Palestinian population in the West Bank in an address to a rally in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Saturday night. 'They burned a family that was sleeping quietly, a family that does not believe in violence,' he said.

“'Netanyahu expressed his condolences but we ask for protection for Duma and for other Palestinian villages. Why was Ali killed? He was 18 months old, what did he do? What did he do to the settlers? We ask that this [incident] mark the end of the suffering of our people.'

"Ali’s grandfather Hussein, whose daughter Reham is still in a critical condition in Tel Hashomer hospital after sustaining third-degree burns over 90% of her body, told Israel Radio on Sunday morning that he did not want 'to enter another cycle of violence'. He said four-year-old Ahmad’s condition had improved and he had regained consciousness.

"In recent years there have been hundreds of cases of 'price tag' attacks and other incidents of settler violence, with almost no indictments filed – 17 churches and mosques have been set ablaze by Jewish extremists in the past four years, yet not a single person has been arrested.

"Netanyahu last year rejected a proposal to deem perpetrators of 'price tag' attacks as members of a terrorist organisation and to allow for their administrative detention, but they were deemed to be 'illegal organisations', which gives security officials more authority to monitor suspects.

"He implied at the time such measures were out of the question since it would mean Jewish terrorists were somehow comparable to terror groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad."

Yes, the Palestinian is Israel's Red Man, to be extirpated or removed by force without his consent, courtesy of notice, or consideration of any other appreciable kind.

This bit from the article does seem all too relevant now, four months later -- as it would have done last year, frankly, or, alas, the year before, and the year before that...

"I think that deeper currents are also at work in this outcome — for example, the ongoing, ultimately futile effort to squeeze Jewish civilization, in its tremendous variability and imaginative range, into the Procrustean confines of the modern nation-state with its flag and postage stamps and proclivity to violence. Modern nationalism always makes a distorted, very limited selection of the available cultural repertoire, flattening out the potential richness; fanatical atavistic forces tend to take the place of what has been lost."

The elegiac tone that haunts this piece and in general the discourse of the disenchanted American Jew intellectual -- after all, is that "tremendous variability and imaginative range... [of] Jewish civilization" such a special property, superior in some mysterious way to the "variability" and "range" possessed by other civilizations? -- suggests to my ear a comfortable removal from the field of play, I mean the trenches of realpolitik in which, indeed, there exist NOTHING but modern nation-states, among those still standing; and in which, as well, the particular modern city-state under whose auspice Shulman is writing in this piece, New York, is likely far more instrumental than, for example, the relatively minor city-state of Tel Aviv, in mounting, enabling and maintaining the motor of this grievous and dangerous atavism gone amok, aka the modern Jewish state in operation.

Not sure I completely agree with you there, Tom. It may be that the only chance of having any impact is to highlight how the nation state has failed the aspirations of many (in this case he seems to be pinning his hopes on ordinary people-if there are still many left who are not brutalized by inflicting brutality-to see through the nation state).

At the moment it is probably true that only the extreme right (even as the meaning of the word 'extreme' changes year by year) are suspicious of the state but I suspect that for some there is still a lingering nostalgia, let us call it for human values that have been trampled upon by the state.

Nothing more than the state (and money). Maybe. Such cold "gods" we have nowadays!